From ‘Mind is a Myth’ - Conversations with U G Krishnamurti

His biological sensitivity (and there is no other kind) is so acute that the movements of celestial bodies, especially the moon, have a visible strong effect on him.



U.G.: The energy you are devoting to the search, to techniques, to your sadhana, or whatever you wish to call it, is taking away the energy you need to live. You are obsessed with finding meaning in life, and that is consuming a lot of energy. If that energy is released from the search for meaning, it can be used to see the futility of all search. Then your life becomes meaningful and the energy may be used for some useful purpose.



U.G.: My interest is not to knock off what others have said (that is too easy), but to knock off what I am saying. More precisely, I am trying to stop what you are making out of what I am saying. This is why my talking sounds contradictory to others.



……..You are interfering with the natural functioning of the nervous system all the time. When a sensation hits your nervous system the first thing you do is to name it and categorize it as pleasure or pain. The next step is that you want to continue the pleasurable sensations and stop the painful sensations. First, the recognition of sensation as pleasure or pain is itself painful. Secondly, the attempt to extend the life of one kind of sensation (pleasure), and to stop another kind of sensation (pain), is also painful. Both activities are choking the body….. The attempt to extend pleasure and stop pain only succeeds in destroying the sensitivity of the body and its ability to respond to sensations. So, what you are doing is very painful for the body.



……..Thought will use any trick under the sun to give momentum to its own continuity. Its essential techniques is to repeat the same thing over and over again; this gives it an illusion of permanency.



……You must build a huge bonfire within you. Then you will become an individual.



U.G.: There are no persons, and no space within to create a self. What is left after the continuity of thought is blown away, is one disjointed, independent, series of interactions. What happens in the environment around me, happens in here. There is no division. When the armour you are wearing around you is stripped away, you find an extraordinary sensitivity of the senses that respond to the phases of the moon, the passage of the seasons, and the movements of the other planets. There is simply no isolated, separate, existence of its own here, only the throb of life, like, a jellyfish.

Q: Can you describe a little of this recurring death process you go through?

U.G.: It is of course defies description. But I can mention that in this death state, the ordinary breath stops entirely and the body is able to ‘breathe’ through other physiological means. Among the many doctors I have discussed this strange phenomena with, only Dr. Laboyer, an expert in childbirth, gave me a sort of explanation. He says that newborn babies have a similar way of breathing.